The Geranium Girls (16 page)

Two days later Stan marched right up to Beryl when he got to work, before even pouring himself a cup of coffee. She watched him approach, thinking how much he looked like Cliff Claven with his blockhead pants and brush mustache.

“Rollo isn’t dead!” he announced.

“Who?” she asked. She was sitting at her desk, drinking her first coffee of the day.

“Dr. Paine’s cat, Rollo. He’s not dead. I saw him yesterday, lying on a couch in the waiting room. At first I thought it must be a new cat, one that looked a lot like Rollo, but I looked close. I’ve had dealings with Rollo; I know him. It was him all right.”

Beryl squeezed her eyes shut against the overhead drone. And something solid was being cracked open somewhere, not too far away. The head-splitting racket of a jackhammer hurt more than just her ears.

“Stan. What are you saying?” She opened her eyes for a second and closed them again to shut out the glare of the fluorescent lights.

“I’m saying that Joe Paine’s cat is alive and well. You were right not to trust that lying brain-sick fuck bucket.”

“Did you see Joe? Did you ask him about it?”

“No. I had just stopped in to make an appointment for Scrug. I didn’t think I should say anything to anyone before checking with you.”

“Good.”

“It feels very…well, strange,” Stan said. “I wonder what he would have said if I had seen him and offered my condolences. I guess he would just have denied ever having said such a thing. I mean, Rollo was right there! Dr. Paine was lying!

“And you say you saw him at Wally’s funeral?” he went on. “What the hell’s that all about?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Sit down!” Beryl was trying to think what all of this could mean, but she couldn’t get anywhere with it. All she could see right now was that for some crazed reason Joe had lied about Rollo’s death. The most likely reason seemed to be so that he could elicit her sympathy, but what a strange time to have done it, when they had just discovered a dead woman in the woods.

Or, maybe he knew he was going to start to cry and that embarrassed him and he felt he should have a good excuse for it, so made up the first thing that came to mind. As if the mushroom girl wasn’t enough!

Or, maybe he was a murderous lunatic and this was just the tip of the iceberg.

“I’m not sure what to do about this,” Beryl said.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Stan replied. “It’s not exactly the kind of thing you report to the police.”

“I think I can, though,” Beryl said. “I think I should tell Frank. He was really good at taking the lobelia and furnace pegs and things seriously. This is kind of like that, isn’t it?”

“Well…I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah, I guess,” Stan said. “God, this is so bizarre. I wonder if Dr. Paine is crazy. Why would anyone who loves his pet as much as he loves Rollo, or says he does, lie and say that he was dead? God, I just can’t believe he’s evil, Beryl. Scrug loves him so much.”

“When did you make the appointment for?” Beryl asked.

“This afternoon.”

Ed sauntered over to them at this point and said, “Any chance of either of you two working extra hours today? We’re really short of bodies this morning.”

“No, thanks,” they said in unison.

“It would really be appreciated. We’re gonna have to order some people back today if I don’t get more volunteers,” Ed said.

“No,” said Stan.

“You can’t force people,” said Beryl.

“We’ll pay you for three hours if you do just one or two hours of extra work,” Ed wheedled.

“Yeah, right,” Stan said. “It never turns out to be nearly as much fun as you say it’s gonna be, Ed. Why don’t you suggest to some of those neckties upstairs that they hire some full-time employees to do this job?”

“It’s not up to me. You know that.”

“The overtime is killing us as it is. I’m gonna be working extra hours on my own route today, for Christ’s sake. Do you want me to die on the job? Is that what you want?”

“No, Stan. I don’t want you to die.”

Ed was backing up now, moving off in the direction of his desk.

“We’re saying no!” Stan shouted after him and a few of the others in the aisle started in with a little chant, “Saying no! Saying no! Saying no!”

Beryl and Stan smiled at each other.

“I’m going to phone Frank,” Beryl said.

She followed Ed, who had a phone in his pocket. Then she turned around and came back.

“I can’t phone him,” she said. “He’s in Brandon till tomorrow on some course or retreat or something.”

“Can’t you call him on his cell phone?” Stan asked.

“I don’t even know if he has one.”

“He must have one. He’s a policeman,” Stan said. He was sorting mail at the speed of light. “What should we do?”

“I don’t know. Let’s think it over during our walks and then discuss it after work before you take Scrug in for…what are you taking him in for?”

“He’s having a little trouble going number two.”

“Oh. Poor old Scrug; that can’t be fun.”

“No. I just hope it’s nothing serious, like a massive growth or something.”

Stan’s sorting went back to the way it was the day after Wally’s death. Slow and studied.

“Don’t worry, Stan. He’s probably okay. He’s just getting kind of old.”

“I don’t want him to get old.”

Exhaust fumes were coming up from the basement where the trucks parked. They mixed with the usual stench of oil and dust and Beryl felt as though she was suffocating. She stepped up her sorting. The sooner she was done, the sooner she would get a breath of fresh air.

The phone rang late that afternoon and Beryl let the machine pick it up. She never did otherwise anymore. It was Stan, so she answered.

“Beryl, I’m coming over,” he said.

“What’s up? Are you home already?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s Scrug?”

“He’s okay. Dr. Paine just gave me a laxative for him. We’ll see how that goes.”

“Okay, so what happened?”

“I’m comin’ over,” Stan said.

“What happened?”

“I want to talk in person.”

Beryl’s temples began to throb. She turned the heat off under her tomato soup and went out to the deck to lie down on her lounger.

She had found a can of mushroom soup in her pantry and had begun spooning it into the pot before she gagged, her body remembering her feelings about mushrooms, even if her head didn’t. She threw the soup away and dug around for a can of tomato.

Now Beryl and the mosquitoes waited for Stan.

They had decided that he would mention Beryl to Joe in passing, not in connection with the mushroom girl, just in an I-think-we-have-a-friend-in-common kind of way, and see what he said, just to tread around him a little on a subject that wasn’t connected to animals.

Beryl trusted Stan to be gentle in his probing and not to do any blurting, like: Why the hell are you going around saying Rollo is dead? What’s the big idea?

They didn’t want to wreck anything while they waited for Frank to come home. They didn’t want Joe Paine running away.

Stan cut through the house to get to the deck, stopping at the fridge for a beer.

“You should lock your back door if you’re gonna be sitting out here,” he said.

“I knew you’d be here in a minute.”

“Still…”

“Yeah, I know. Okay. What happened?”

“I’m warning you. It’s weird.”

“What, Stan?”

“He says he’s never heard of you.”

“What?”

“Joe Paine has never heard of you and I think he’s telling the truth.”

“How could that be?”

Stan sat down in one of the green plastic chairs and took a long pull on his Fort Garry Pale Ale. He was still in his post office clothes.

“Is it possible,” he asked, “that the guy who you met is a different Joe Paine? One that isn’t a vet?”

“I didn’t make up the part about him being a vet,” Beryl said. “I had never heard of him before, remember? It was you that was all excited about him. He told me he was a vet. I remember it clearly. He said: I’m a veterinarian. I remember thinking that it was an odd thing for him to say at such a time, with a woman lying dead just a few yards away. Like, who cared what his occupation was? It wouldn’t have occurred to me to say: I’m a letter carrier.”

Beryl stopped talking and Stan stopped drinking and they stared at each other for a long moment.

“Let’s take me to your Dr. Joe Paine and show him to me,” Beryl said.

“Yes. Let’s.”

They hopped into Stan’s junk heap of a car — a 1976 Buick. Actually, the car belonged to his older daughter, the one whose ass he thought the sun shone out of. She had lent it to him while she traipsed around the British Isles.

In less than five minutes they were at the Becker Animal Hospital.

Beryl hung back a little as they approached the front door. She wasn’t totally confident that the person she was about to encounter wouldn’t be the strange and troubled man that had cried the first time he met her. And she did not want to see that man.

Stan went in first and she followed. There were two women in the reception area, busy on phones, and one man in a white smock studying a chart. And there was a Siamese cat, making quite a ruckus in its cage while its master tried to soothe it with little clucking sounds. Rollo was the cause of the disturbance; at least Beryl assumed it was Rollo, since he seemed to have the run of the place. He sat a few feet away from the cage staring calmly at the cat.

The man in the smock looked up and smiled when they came in. He wasn’t fat but he had a substantive air about him, as though he enjoyed eating and cooking and trying new recipes. Not unlike Frank Foote in his physical presence, but with a twinkle in his eye instead of the sadness. And he looked to be about Frank’s age, fifty or so.

“Hello again, Stan. Did you forget something?” he asked.

“Hi, Dr. Paine,” Stan said. “Yeah, I forgot to pick up dog food while I was here.”

“How did you get along administering the laxative to Scrug, or have you tried it yet?”

“Yeah, I did it as soon as I got home and he seemed to actually like it.”

Dr. Paine laughed. “Yeah, a lot of dogs do. It’s our most popular laxative. Be sure to keep in touch. Let me know if things don’t get any better and we’ll figure out what to do next.”

“Thanks, I will.”

Stan bought a bag of dry dog food that he didn’t need and they went back outside.

“It’s not him,” Beryl said and sat down on the front steps of the animal hospital. “Stan. It’s not him.”

He sat down beside her.

“I’m sorry for not introducing you. I didn’t think we should confuse the issue any more before we talk to this Frank of yours. It was enough that I tried to insist that he knew a Beryl Kyte earlier in the day without actually introducing him to one later.”

“This is majorly mind-boggling,” Beryl said.

“It seems unbelievable to me that the police don’t know about this,” Stan said. “I mean, they would have had to talk to the guy pretending to be Joe Paine again after that day, wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t know. They never tried to talk to me again after that day,” Beryl said, “at least not after the day I went in to give my statement. Except for that jerk, Christie, calling to see if I stole his photo. And that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t taken it. Probably the guy who said he was Joe didn’t steal anything from the police station. “Let me just think about something for a minute,” Beryl said.

They sat quietly on the step while she tried to order her thoughts about the morning in St. Vital Park.

“He told me his name was Joe Paine,” she said finally. “That doesn’t necessarily mean he told the cops his name was Joe Paine. I don’t know what he said to them. He said it, whatever it was, a ways away from me. I remember watching him talk to them, but at a distance; I didn’t hear him. He could have told them his name was Joe Christ for all I know.

“And,” she went on, “when he made the call on his phone, I think he said: my name is Joe. I don’t think he gave a last name at all. God, I wish Frank was here.”

“We’ve got to phone the police anyway,” Stan said. “Frank or no Frank, we can’t not phone them with this information.”

“Are you thinking that this other Joe, whoever he is, is the killer of the two women?” Beryl asked.

“Well, yeah. Aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I guess I am. His behaviour has just been too…out there. It really creeps me out to think I was alone with him and I’ve talked to him on the phone and everything.”

“I think you’re in danger, Beryl. And Hermione’s probably in danger too.”

“Well, if he doesn’t know that we know he’s not Joe Paine, then nothing’s that different.”

“What if he does know? What if he’s been spying on us today? He could be watching us right now for all we know.” Stan looked nervously over both shoulders.

“He attacked both women in the parks where they were jogging. He didn’t abduct them or anything. That’s not the way he operates.”

“Beryl, he’s wacko. We don’t know how he operates. We don’t know how his demented mind works. Do you think he sticks to a schedule with no room for alternatives? He’s hardwired differently from me and you. He could do anything!”

“God. Maybe he was planning on killing me that day in the park.”

“Maybe.”

“I wonder why he didn’t?”

“Maybe you’re not tall enough, or skinny enough. I don’t know.”

“He told me he walked there every Saturday morning and I believed him,” Beryl said. “Let’s go back to my house. I’m going to phone my good friend, Sergeant Christie.”

“Good.”

Sergeant Christie wouldn’t give Beryl the information she wanted: the other Joe’s last name. He didn’t even think about it, just said no, right off the bat. She wished now she’d been nicer to him and that she hadn’t been stupid enough to steal the picture off his bulletin board. She didn’t know who else to ask for, or what else to tell him, so she hung up.

This didn’t sit well with Stan. He thought they should be telling somebody everything they knew.

Beryl was of a mind that things could get messy and unpleasant if they didn’t wait for Frank. Maybe it was too much television or maybe just the general paranoia she had been feeling lately. She just didn’t trust Gregor Christie and his unpleasant attitude.

She pressed redial and got the sergeant again.

“Could you please tell me when Inspector Foote will be back?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

“Um…about when tomorrow, do you know?”

“No.”

She hung up and turned to Stan. “I’m waiting for Frank,” she said. “He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“In that case, both you and Hermione are sleeping at our house tonight,” Stan said. “No arguments.”

“You won’t get one from me,” Beryl said. “Let’s stop at Herm’s without warning and kidnap her.”

“I’ll phone Raylene and tell her what she’s in for.”

“Just a sec.”

Beryl dialled the main switchboard at the police station and asked for Frank Foote’s cell phone number. To her surprise, they gave it to her.

She dialled it and a girl answered.

“Is Frank Foote there, please?”

“He’s out of town for a couple of days. May I take a message?”

“Uh…is this his cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“Uh…”

“I’m his daughter, Sadie. Can I help you?”

“Oh. Uh…I guess he doesn’t have his phone with him then, in Brandon.”

“No. He left it with my sister, Emma, so she can keep track of my brother and me while he’s away.”

“I see. Okay…”

“Emma’s doing the laundry.”

“Oh. And your dad will be back tomorrow, will he?”

“Yes. In the afternoon sometime.”

“Okay. Thanks, then, Sadie. If he phones home could you please tell him that Beryl Kyte is hoping very much to talk to him?”

“Sure.”

At least Sadie had been more forthcoming than Sergeant Christie. Beryl wondered if she should have tried to get a number for Frank in Brandon. But she kept thinking maybe she was overreacting or confused, that there would be simple explanations for everything and she would end up feeling like an idiot.

She left Stan to phone Raylene and threw a few things into her backpack.

“How did this guy know that I didn’t know Dr. Paine, that I wouldn’t know right off that he was impersonating him?” Beryl asked when Stan hung up the phone. “Dr. Paine could very easily be Jude and Dusty’s vet.”

“Probably he took a chance and lucked out,” Stan said.

“But what an odd chance to take. What an odd thing to do.”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s pick up snacks and booze and stuff on the way,” Beryl said, her voice a little higher-pitched than usual. “Let’s not go to work tomorrow.”

“It’s not a party, Beryl. You’re hiding out at my house.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t have fun. Should I bring my Trivial Pursuit game? Or Scrabble?”

“Yeah, okay. Just Trivial Pursuit, though, not Scrabble,” Stan said. “I don’t like Scrabble; I never win.

“I’m a little worried about all the tall thin customers of Hermione’s that aren’t coming to my house tonight,” he went on.

“Well, at least the police were sensible enough to make that stuff public information,” Beryl said. “And they contacted all Herm’s clients, tall and thin, short and thin, tall and fat — all of them — to warn them that they are especially vulnerable.”

“Yeah, that’s good.”

Beryl explained the plan to Dusty and Jude while giving them a gentle pat. Then she turned the key in her new lock and followed Stan out to the old Buick.